Paul Michael Peters is an American fiction author. His works include "Peter in Flight", "The Symmetry of Snowflakes", and a collection of short stories titled "Mr. Memory and Other Stories of Wonder." After studying at the Second City in Chicago, he spent extended periods of time living in Philadelphia and Toronto before returning home to his beloved big mitten-shaped state in Ann Arbor Michigan. He also writes a blog titled Everywhere Man about his frequent travels.

“Get out of my way, all of you!This is no place for loafers.Join me or die.Can you do any less?”

There are some rules to living in an apartment complex.

You should always find a place with the thickest cement walls possible. This will keep the noise of your neighbors Yanni midnight music marathon during his break up with a girl he dated for a whole two weeks down to a manageable level. At times I can hear the Asian couple through the wall having very loud sex, I wonder if it is really worth the sacrifice of having limited ability to hang pictures, then I remove the glass and stop listening.

Always live on the top most floor. My “garden level” apartment did not have a view of the garden, it barley had windows. Dreams were vivid in this apartment. They were most often of people walking all over me. I blame it on the creaking floor boards above me and the dancing hippos who were breeding there.

In the basement you also find the funniest surprises. After returning for two consecutive weeks on the road I opened my door to find an exposed sewer pipe under my sink with, what smelled like, two weeks worth of black tar like crap all over the floor. The smell will never go away.

So tonight, when I went to pick up a load of laundry that had been drying in what is normally the worlds best facilities, I didn’t mind that the party girl who used the dryer before me left a half pound of glitter from her skanky weekend. Or it may well have been one of the two children in this complex who just dumped a whole bottle of sparkle glue for the heck of it. I know it was my fault for not checking and double checking first.